WFIU:

Godspell May 13, 2000	Alcina May 20, 2000	Measure for Measure June 10, 2000
You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown June 17, 2000	Moon Over Buffalo July 6, 2000	The Sound of Music July 8, 2000
The Barber of Seville July 29, 2000	It Runs in the Family August 5, 2000	The Comedy of Errors August 12, 2000

Review of Godspell
Reviewed May 13, 2000

Godspell is a musical of songs and skits conceived by John Michael Tebalek. It is loosely based on the life of Jesus with a focus on those puzzling parables in Mathew and Luke. Bloomington Music Works’ show at the Waldron Arts Center has a nice mix of improvisational feel and ensemble polish in the production directed by Shawn Rieshael-Johnson.

Of the musical shows based on this material, Jesus Christ Super Star rocks harder and Leonard Bernstein’s Mass is deeper, but Godspell does a nice job of presenting its own focus and take on the story.

Music director Brian Samarzea has prepared Godspell’s vocal ensembles well and he presided from the keyboard over a nicely balanced instrumental quartet. The cast takes on their varied and various roles with enthusiasm, grace and skill. Each cast member got opportunities for solo sections or numbers. All ten of them are good singers, though none was able to consistently fill the hall with sound. The in-the-round staging in the large room of the Waldron offered a lot of entertaining and interesting possibilities for the choreography and staging, but left me frequently straining for words from individual voices.

From Godspell’s music by Stephen Schwarz, probably the best known song is "Day by Day." The song in its first appearance and as the reprise has a certain bitter sweet quality of dogged endurance and potential hope. It nicely frames a story that intertwines the idea of the radically redemptive powers of faith and love and the equally radical concept of earthly success followed by eternal damnation. Schwarz’s music for Godspell is in a wide range of popular styles. There are blues, ragtime, straight songs, hymns, a Charleston and even some rave up rock and roll.

Bloomington Music Works offers a solidly produced, fresh feeling production of this minor classic.

Alcina
Reviewed May 20, 2000
Aired May 22 and 24

The Bloomington Early Music Festival opened this past weekend with performances of George Frederic Handel's opera Alcina in a nicely realized production. There is an outstanding cast, interesting staging by James Middleton and fine conducting by Stanley Ritchie.

Alcina is based on those same wild stories of knights, sorcerers and enchantments that drove Don Quixote crazy. You-Seong Kim sang the role of Alcina with drama, precision and a certain commanding aloofness. Alcina's enchanted beau, Ruggiero, was sung by Jessica Riley. Riley sang well and without trying to overly ape masculinity, she did a good job of playing the young hero. Alcina's sister Morgana was sung by Wanda Yang. Yang had some simply unbelievable moments of vocal power and control. She also got to ham it up a bit, which she did with obvious pleasure. Aaron Sheehan competently handled the part of Orante, Morgana's boyfriend. The heroine and sometimes hero of Alcina, Bradamante, was sung to good effect by Maya Frieman Hoover. Bradamante's aid, Melisso, was sung by Matt Ofschin. Ofschin did a very nice job with his singing and as the only low voice in the cast, his work was always especially welcome. Brooke Evers had the part of Oberto, who sought to rescue his gather from Alcina's enchantments.

Just for fun, let me summarize. There are two girls who are supposed to be guys all the time. Thre are two guys who are supposed to be guys all the time. There are two girls who are supposed to be girls all the time. There is one girl who is supposed to be a boy some of the time. Actually, on stage at the Bloomington Early Music Festival this is all pretty clear, most of the time.

A fully rigged theatre in Handel's day was a real toyshop for designers and directors. "Alcina"'s

James Middleton has had to work with only a fraction of those resources, but his dramatic use of the canvas backdrop and a few multi-sided flats to create a variety of scenes of an enchanted island served well.

Among the particular pleasures of the Bloomington Early Music Festival's production of Alcina, conducted by Stanley Ritchie, was the variety and beauty of the mix of the vocals and the orchestra. it seemed that each aria had its own special timbral treatment. There were times when the orchestral playing was sparse. There were times when it was full. During one aria, the violins might be featured. During another, the singer might seem to part of a chorus with the oboes. There was even a brief duet dual with a singer and horn.

Director James Middleton has said that Handel's Italian operas didn't survive because the snobs like opera to be more inaccessible than Handel's were and the general audience was afraid of Italian. This seems to suggest that those who aren't snobs and aren't afraid of Italian will find a lot to enjoy in Alcina and that is indeed the case.

The Bloomington Early Music Festival continues with concerts at various venues through the 29th. Handel's opera Alcina has its final performance Saturday at seven at the Buskirk Chumley Theatre.

Measure for Measure
Reviewed June 10, 2000
Aired June 12 and 14

Measure for Measure is the first of the Monroe County Civic Theatre’s Shakepeare plays in the park this summer. The complicated comedy, directed by Amanda Renee Baker, flows well in a varied and briskly paced production. In a night that offers music as well as drama, there’s even a thought provoking overture for chamber orchestra by Matt Van Bink.

In Measure for Measure strict law comes to Vienna as Angelo, a deputy, has been left in charge while the reigning Duke feigns taking a vacation. The lusty young Claudio is sentenced to death for premarital sex by the stiffly virtuous Angelo. Claudio’s sister, the stiffly virtuous Isabella, pleads his case so eloquently that she tempts judge Angelo. In a nice bit of unbending, Angelo pledges to spare Claudio if Isabella will bend to his newly discovered ardor. As in many of the period’s comedies, the playwright’s problem and the audience’s fun is to see how this is all going to be worked out and end in a nice round of marriages.

There are outstanding and richly textured performances by Mike Price as Duke Vincentio, Chelsea Rohweder as the much put upon Isabella and Justin Robertson as the scapegrace Lucio. Frank Buczolich was an audience favorite as the flea bitten prisoner Barnardine. Angie Hickman was pert as Mistress Overdone

Over the year’s audiences and critics has been troubled by Measure for Measure. The characters are too complex, too developed, too real if you will. The real pain that we feel in the struggle of Isabella and the anger that we feel at the Duke’s plottings are not equaled by the neatly mounted stock ending. The Monroe County Civic’s director, Amanda Renee Baker, recognizes the problem and she has a couple of approaches that if anything intensify the conflict and a final moment that both recognizes the play’s failure and rescues it.

Baker has chosen to make her sympathetic figures in the justice system women. Jamie Acres as the aged counselor Escalus is deeply sympathetic to the power of lust and the virtues of mercy.. In her other court dealings, she acts as almost a family counselor might moving individually to the various complainants and working things out rather than ruling from the bench. The jailer, the Provost, Kaira Hogle has a less active role, but her sympathy with the cause of the actions and care for the various prisoners works well.

These elements are neatly worked in, but it is the final moment where Baker strikes home and turns the whole play around. The Duke is resolving everything in a neat fashion. Marriages are both the rewards and the punishments for the various characters. It’s a cure for premarital sex, breaking of marriage vows, vicious scandal mongering and depraved misuse of authority. In the final moment, the Duke is to wrap everything up by taking Isabella’s hand in marriage. But this Isabella, at first apparently deferent as she takes off the habit of the novice nun that she had aspired to, flings it down and proudly walks out on the Duke, the assembled couples and the happy ending.

The Monroe County Civic Theatre’s production of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure plays this Friday and Saturday at eight in Third Street Park.

Review of "You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown"
Reviewed June 17, 2000

Saturday night I went to Nashville to see the Brown County Playhouse’s production of Clark Gesner’s musical "You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown." Although, I take full responsibility for this review, I must begin by reporting that I am the husband and father of a household with divided opinions.

We’ll get to those opinions soon, but first some facts. "You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown" is the opening show at the Brown County Playhouse. The production is economically directed and neatly choreographed by George Pinney. Music Director Michael Slon , who leads the show from the piano, has done a good job of preparing a cast of actors that all sing well. Wes Peters has put together a delightful set with a very nice whimsical feel.

The show is about those things that the "Peanuts" strip focused on. There is Linus with his dependance on his blanket. Shroeder is the artist lost in his music. Lucy is the bossy older sister who is right just often enough to keep her precarious place. Charlie Brown is the all American striver with the focus on lost kites and the annual disastrous baseball season..

Of the cast, I especially enjoyed the wild whimsey of Ben Cohen as the irrepressible Snoopy. Stan Wash had the proper balance of forlorn hope and dark foreboding that make Charlie Brown like some of us all the time and most of us some of the time. Megan McKinney was always on top and ready for battle as Lucy. I had forgotten about the musical number that has all the characters coping, characteristically, with a book report on "Peter Rabbit. Lucy was counting her hundred words out, word by word. Linus was doing some deep criticism and Charlie Brown was simply giving up. I especially enjoyed the way music, words and character all worked together

Now to those divided opinions. My wife, who is far from uncritical and committed the recording of the show to memory years ago, thought it an excellent production by a fine cast. My son, who’s frequently critical though more familiar with the tv productions than the original, offers that it was good and all the actors can really sing. Frankly, I wasn’t much moved by most of it and kept seeing tired adult actors instead of fresh kids on stage, but must register this as a minority opinion.

Review of Moon Over Buffalo at Brown Co.
Reviewed July 6, 2000

Brown County Playhouse in Nashville is currently offering Ken Ludwig’s backstage farce, Moon Over Buffalo, with a very accomplished cast in a neatly orchestrated production directed by Dale McFadden. Playwright Ken Ludwig’s name may be familiar to Brown County Playhouse fans who enjoyed the very successful staging of his play Lend Me a Tenor during the 1995 season.

Moon Over Buffalo gives us a family theater company in the 1950s playing to smaller and smaller crowds as people turn to television for entertainment. The company’s and the family’s problems all work together for maximum irritation for them and maximum amusement for the audience.

A theater director once told me that besides the selection of a good play, the best thing that a director could do was have good luck in casting. He put good casting at seventy to eighty percent of a show’s success. Brown County production seems to bear this out. Even in this lightweight comedy, each actor showed real depth, skill and control with their part. Rob Johansen played the wildly egotistical and yet attractive actor-manager, George Hay, with just the right hammy panache as Cyrano and equal ham though less panache elsewhere. Martha Jacobs, was totally in command of her part as his long suffering and equally theatrical wife, Charlotte Hay.

Mary Sylvester plays the family’s grandmother and the theater company’s costume mistress in Moon Over Buffalo. She was always on the comic mark whether her character had her hearing aid on or off. Kelly Ann Ford was the apparently sensible daughter of this wildly disfunctional family. She seemed totally ready for an off stage career as the wife of a tv weatherman until the theater lured her back. Peter Gerharz was her hapless fiancee. Gerharz was charming as the star struck young man. Melissa Joy Nedell did solid service as the company’s screaming ingenue.

At the center of the company, the anchor is Erik Anderson. Anderson’s character is as smitten with the theater as anyone in the play. He’s more aware of everything that’s going on but, he can’t do anything about most of it. Finally, there’s Wolf Sherrill as the company lawyer. Sherrill didn’t miss a beat as the successful business man who is taken by the theater and its people, but stays safe outside.

Moon Over Buffalo is a little piece of delightfully put together theatrical chaos that’s a lot of fun to watch. It plays Wednesdays through Sundays in July.

Review of The Sound of Music
Reviewed July 8, 2000

The IU Opera Theater's summer musical is the favorite, The Sound of Music. Conductor Michael Schwartzkopf, director Vincent Liotta and choreographer George Pinney have put together a real theatrical summer treat in this final collaboration of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein.
The story is of a young postulant coming to be the governess of the seven children of a decorated Austrian military man and widower, Captain von Trapp, their falling in love and then the family's dramatic escape from the encroaching Germans. This is certainly the stuff of sentiment, but it's also based on the true story of the Trapp Family.
The part of the commanding but kindly Mother Abbess in The Sound of Music is a fine role that takes a good actor for the thoughtful scenes with Maria and a heroic singer for the demands of the
song "Climb Every Mountain." Janice Hauxwell had just the right measure of strictness and wisdom and did a fine job with the singing.
Tiffany Rosenquist was the postulant and governess Maria. Rosenquist acted with great energy and sang beautifully in a role that puts a lot of sophisticated demands on her voice. Her diction was letter perfect, she simply glowed around the children.
The children are a key to any production of The Sound of Music. The show requires the children to so grow under Maria's teaching that they move the toughest audience, their own embittered father. They looked terrific and each had his or her own special character. All sang enchantingly. Solveig Olsen, Evan Van Doren, Britt Nicole Hendrix, Brian Lauer, Stephanie Marie Gardner and last, but not least, Lynne Bauman.
While we're on the children, we should specially mention Solveig Olsen in the role of the oldest, the "Sixteen going on Seventeen" young woman. She was appropriately bashful in her duet with the young messenger Rolf, sung well by Nathan Bick.
Taylor Hightower played the stalwart Captain von Trapp. Von Trapp is such a stiff character that it must be hard for an actor to come up with an appropriate range for his emotions, but Hightower's singing made up for the occasional lapses.
The secondary plot of The Sound of Music brings in a couple of characters who throw the drama of the Nazi takeover of Austria into even sharper relief. Jeremy Brimm plays a very engaging wheeler dealer theater entrepreneur, Max, who seeks von Trapp'financial support. Mollie Dustin was Elsa Shrader, a sophisticated if slightly brittle business woman who wants to be the next Mrs. von Trapp. Max and Elsa counsel Captain von Trapp to get along by going along in the song "No Way to Stop It," but he'll have none of this compromise. It's interesting that in a musical filled with heartfelt hymns, anthems and folk like songs, those two have their own separate musical environment in the show's only Broadway patter pieces.
The Sound of Music is a sentimental favorite for many and the IU Opera Theater production shows the success of loving and lavish attention to producing a delightful evening in the theater.

Review of The Barber of Seville
From 07-29-00, for 07-31 and 08-02

The IU Opera Theater’s production of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville is musically and theatrically a lively one. The music is energetically and lyrically offered. The story is well told and the gags abound. Mark Ross Clark in responsible for the staging. He’s got the singers doing about as much acting as possible and I’ve never seen C. David Higgins revolving set used to better advantage.

Eric Small was Saturday night’s Barber. He sang very well and his engaging aplomb reminded me of a young Chevy Chase. The Barber’s task is to use all of his ingenuity and connections to help the love stricken Count Almaviva woo Rosina, and to save her from marriage to her guardian the cantankerous old Dr. Bartolo.

Eric Small sang the part of the enamoured Count. Rossini is terribly rewarding to singers, but the road he maps can be treacherous. Small has a tight focused tenor and had what sounded like a near fatal crash at the end of his opening aria, but came back strongly through the rest of the evening.

The Rosina that he longs for was sung by April Golliver.. Her deportment along with the wig and extreme eye shadow seemed to suggest an older and more settled woman. I think of Rosina as a more youthful, and flirtatious girl, but Golliver she certainly was up to the lyricism and gymnastics of the lovely music.

Now that we’ve talked about the heros and heroine, it’s time to mention those delightful villains that Rossini’s ...Barber of Seville treats us too.

David Meyer was the old pantelon and guardian Dr. Bartolo. Meyer was just mean enough to arouse our ire and just comical enough to let us laugh it off. He was ably or disably abetted by Brian Banion as the scheming Don Basillio.

Corey McKern had a nice comic turn as a wind blow servant in the famous storm scene.

Imre Pallo conducted the successful evening, even taking a turn at the harpsichord to accompany the recitatives.

Review of It Runs in the Family
Reviewed August 5, 2000

The Brown County Playhouse has been offering a British farce each summer for a number of years. I’ve lost count, but I think that It Runs in the Family is the fifth of playwright Ray Cooney’s pieces. In my memory, it’s the funniest of the lot.

Bruce Burgun directs a multi-talented cast in a production where the level of energy and convoluted activity is hard to believe. The set for It Runs in the Family is a doctors’ common room in a London hospital. There are two sets of double doors, three or so regular doors and, for good measure, a wide double casemented window. Every possible entrance and exit gets a workout as people pop in and out through the show.

Wolf Sherrill plays a British neurologist preparing to deliver the speech that will be the apex of his career and put him in line for a knighthood. He seems a shoo-in, until an old love, played with chrm by Melissa Joy Nedell, arrives with the news that she and the doctor have an eighteen year old son. Not only do they have a son, but the son, played by Jackson Bloom as a cartoon figure of wild punk with pink spiked hair, leather and various piercings, is at the hospital to see his long lost father. Sherrill goes into high gear to try to keep this a secret at least until he can get his speech done.

Sherrill enlists the grudging help of two other doctors, played by Alan Craig and Erik Anderson, and the unwitting help of the starchy hospital matron played by Mary Foster-Kinzer Sylvester to help with his ploys. Now farces are very much about frustation. And true to form, it seemed that every time Sherrill had hit upon a simple expedient, something happened and a still more complicated tactic had to added to the original one. At one point things were so raucously out of hand that each of the three doctors showed up dressed as the hospital matron. As one of the doctors, Erik Anderson was especially delightful as he became more and more confusedly enmeshed in the plots and counterplots of It Runs in the Family.. Near the end, things had gone so far that Anderson plaintively confessed, "I’ve lost track of what I’m supposed to be covering up."

Farce works only when it is juxtaposed with some semblance of normality. In the playhouse production the semblance was from the hospital administration, the civil authority and the family. Steve Heise represented the hospital as the redoubtable Sir Willoughby Drake. Peter Gerharz was the civil authority as the stolidest of police sergeants. Carolyn Klein was for the family, as the epitome of a respectable doctor’s wife.

. I saw It Runs in the Family with a full house on Saturday. It got a lot of laughs from a very appreciative crowd. The show plays Wednesdays through Sundays through August twenty-sixth at the Brown County Playhouse.

Review of The Comedy of Errors
Reviewed August 12, 2000

What’s funnier than a Roman comedy with twin masters who take turns baffling people and beating up their confused common servant? Well of course, twin servants to go with the twin masters. At least that’s what William Shakespeare did in The Comedy of Errors.

The Monroe County Civic Theater’s Third Street Park series presents a production adapted and directed by Kyle McIntosh. McIntosh is a regular on the Bloomington theatre scene. A couple of years ago he directed a Third Street Park production of one of Shakespeare’s bloodiest farragoes Titus Andronicus. I’m pleased to tell you that his turn at comedy is even more successful and the body count a good deal lower.

McIntosh chose to use a television sitcom format for his opening with a voice over setting up the action and a character by character introduction as each was named and rushed on and off stage. There were little musical bridges between the scenes and even a discrete but timely recorded laugh track. In addition to a fast introduction, McIntosh has judicially cut the show and it plays in a little less than an hour.

Scot Shambin and Dane Bolinger did a nice job as the twin masters of The Comedy of Errors. They were ably seconded by their twin servants, Martin Wilson and Sean Fear. Rachel Esarey was the classiest of local merchants. Jessical Lawson was appropriately slutty as the local courtesan. Sina Kramer, Katelin hope Vesely, Tyler Andrews and Rance Fawfush were effective as the variously befuddled in laws and associates. Frank Buczolich, Jon Jennings, Tim Johnson and Judy Blackburn were at the crux of the legal and even religious forces who help with the complications and the straightening out of the story. Nile J. Arena was a doctor, a messenger even a beleaguered Shakespeare student.

Saturday night’s weather for The Comedy of Errors was actually chilly in the park, but the production more than warmed things up. Diction from the whole cast was good and there was respect for the weight or lightness of the lines. The whole cast moved smoothly and briskly. The live audience usually laughed in the same places but a good deal louder than the recorded laugh track.

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Last updated: Tuesday, October 9, 2001
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